


The Meaning of Entropy

by leeloo6



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dirty Talk, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, Love Confessions, M/M, POV John Watson, Panic Attacks, Possessive Behavior, Protective John, Sherlock (TV) Season/Series 04 Fix-it, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:06:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25634776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leeloo6/pseuds/leeloo6
Summary: "Dear John,Given enough time, everything falls into disorder: walls collapse, stone erodes, people grow old. (Entropy isn’t actually about chaos, but I’m making a compromise to maintain the poetic tone of this letter. It’s what you like.) The two of us are a closed system, we have been from day one, and it was inevitable for us to grow apart, to nurse disorder, to have to do the work of resisting chaos with a good measure of order.Which we didn’t- and yet, here we are.I, as well, wouldn’t have it any other way.Always yours,Sherlock"
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 61
Kudos: 148





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My S4 fix-it, from John's POV. I'll update the tags as I upload the next chapters. Enjoy!

Clouds painted in grey hues, heavy with the promise of rain. The subdued hums of car engines, interrupted by the occasional roar. Passers-by, passing by and minding their little lives, not unlike their own. Nothing seems askew on Baker Street. However, today is different, because 1. John had just cried in Sherlock’s arms earlier on in the afternoon, and 2. They’d had cake. 

They’d shared inside jokes, laughed, avoided each other’s gaze, looked at each other too much- him, Sherlock and Molly. Just like the old times, almost (but not really) ignoring the heaviness of the past days. The hospital. The blood. The crying, the embrace. _I just needed a hug._ Sherlock had stolen approximately thirty percent of his cake. John remembered something an old girlfriend had told him. She was a psychologist. They hadn’t lasted long. She’d said- _Sugar addiction is a substitute for affection._

They walk in silence towards the flat, which happens to be in the same direction as John’s tube station. John can’t measure the air between them, doesn’t know how to take its pulse anymore after their earlier embrace. Something has shifted, but he’s not sure what. He’s used to crossing lines all the time, taking risks, _I said dangerous and here you are,_ but not these kind of lines. Not the ones that say “don’t beat your best friend up” or “don’t cry ~~in his arms~~ in front of him”. John takes a deep breath, remembers what his father used to tell him. _Never ask for help. You can’t rely on anyone but yourself._ He thinks of Sherlock almost dying for him. He thinks of his hand on the back of John’s neck, the quiet comfort of him holding space like no one else had before, then he thinks no more.  


They’ve reached the flat. Sherlock has been looking at him the whole time. Deducing. John doesn’t want to know his conclusions. He feels raw, exposed, weary and strangely relieved. Mary has been gone for hours.  


He clears his throat, shifts a little from one leg to the other.  


“So. This has been… good.”  


“Yes,” Sherlock replies immediately. His expression is guarded, but not unkind. Even though he keeps his hands clasped behind his back, a picture of quiet politeness, the stubble makes him look older and brings his chaos into full view.  


“Happy birthday once again,” John says.  


“Thank you, John.”  


John nods shortly.  


“Bye, mate.” _Mate._ The word feels like lead in his mouth, but he keeps saying it, if only for the sake of consistency. “See you tomorrow at ten.”  


He turns around on his heels and takes a few steps.  


“John.”  


John breathes, clenches and unclenches his fists, turns around to look at Sherlock. Sherlock, who has been high for weeks, Sherlock, who almost died for on him, Sherlock, who seems to have lost his edges, watered down to this raw, vulnerable creature who looks at him with an honesty that he can hardly bear.  


“Would you like to… stay?”  


“Um…”  


“Come up. For tea.”  


“Well, I’ve got Rosie…”  


“Her sitter’s currently chatting on Facebook with a man she met last weekend at a salsa course. He finishes work at 9. Your house is significantly closer to his office than hers, so you’d be doing her a favour by extending her work hours, allowing him to pick her up.” Sherlock smiles faintly, then something in his expression shifts. _Bit not good?_ “Unless…” he adds rapidly, “you think that leaving Rosie with someone else for so long negatively impacts her development, so you’d rather…”  


“Sherlock.” John laughs, releasing a breath he didn’t realize he was keeping in. “You’re a cock, you know that?”  


After a moment’s surprise, Sherlock’s lips curl into a smile.  


“Yeah. I’ve been told.”  


-  


The living room is familiar and foreign at the same time with all its edges and its shadows, tamed by years of history. Late-night violin, late-night cases. Boxes full of books, telly and serial killers. John sinks into his armchair, focusing on the warmth of the teacup, allowing himself two entire seconds spent in the blissful, thoughtless comfort of the place that used to be his home.  


They don’t work like that, the two of them. Not anymore.  


“So, we’re doing this, then,” he starts. “The tea and the… sitting.”  


Sherlock swallows, looking down at his teacup.  


“Problem?”  


“No, it’s just that… “ John laughs, a short, nervous sound. “Yeah, actually. Yes. What you did, Sherlock. It was… “  


John raises his hand, urges it to speak for him. After a second, he gives up and lowers it back, curling it into a fist on the soft arm of his chair. He focuses on the sensation. Anchoring, simple- unlike this.  


“John, you don’t need to feel like you owe me something,” Sherlock says. “I did what I needed to do.”  


John huffs, a mixture of bitter amusement and disbelief.  


“What you needed to do? What you _needed_ to do? You almost went and got yourself killed, you lunatic! You found a case- the most complicated case you could’ve picked- and tried to solve it while you were entirely off your tits on drugs!” John feels the anger rising, traveling from the pit of his stomach to the tip of his tongue. He wants to pack it up in a concentrated form and send it directly to Sherlock’s brain- his brilliance, his utter stupidity. “Did you ever think for a moment that you might not make it out alive?”  


_Did you ever think that instead of saving me, you might put me through all of that again?_   


“Yes,” Sherlock says in a small voice. “Of course I have, John.” He looks vulnerable again, like someone ~~(John)~~ has shrunk his bigger-than-life personality and turned it into something else. Something that he needs to control, to repent for, to slowly suffocate in a treacherous hospital room.  


John feels his anger subside as fast as it had risen, replaced by nausea. He takes a deep breath and looks away.  


“Look, just listen to me. What I did back there, it wasn’t good. I should’ve never… hit you like that. Yes, I was angry. Yes, I was scared.” He meets Sherlock’s wide-eyed look. “I was scared, Sherlock, because for a moment, I thought we were doing… that thing again. That thing where you tell me that it’s all a lie, a game, then you disappear for two years making me think you’re dead.”  


“Oh.”  


Understanding dawns on Sherlock’s face. He looks at John with… empathy? _Pity_? It feels like entirely too much.  


“Anyway, none of that was a good reason for…doing what I did,” he continues, fixing his gaze somewhere in the area of Sherlock’s chest. “ _Nothing_ would’ve been a good reason for doing what I did. I’m sorry. Forgive me.”  


In his peripheral vision, he sees Sherlock nodding.  


“Thank you, John.”  


“Don’t thank me, you git,” John huffs. “I put you in the hospital, then you almost died because I somehow decided it was time to throw away years of friendship. Because I was hurt- as if you weren’t. I didn’t _give_ you anything to thank me for.” John feels moisture gathering in the corners of his eyes, entirely unwelcome. He doesn’t want to cry in front of Sherlock, not again. He swallows, wipes at his eyes, squares his shoulders. Looks up.  


Sherlock is no longer in his chair. Instead, he’s bridged the gap between them, crouching in front of John. _Oh._ John’s brain provides him, entirely inappropriate, with the memory of his stag night. The proximity, the comfortable oblivion. The warmth in his chest (and in various other areas of his body), his hand on Sherlock’s knee. He- absurdly- feels like laughing. It wouldn’t be a pleasant sound, so he keeps quiet.  


“John,” Sherlock says, his voice steady, his gaze unfaltering. “You gave me more than I could ever expect from another human being. Your friendship, your loyalty, your care, were… more than I ever thought I would receive in this life.” He looks away. “You have experienced terrible loss and grief, right when you thought you’d had enough of it for a lifetime. Is it not normal to expect an imperfect reaction?”  


“Yeah, see, you always find excuses for other people. You always find justifications,” John replies, not thinking about the warmth pooling in his chest alongside ugly, clawing guilt, not thinking about saying _You were more than I expected, too. God, how much more._ “Some things just aren’t okay, Sherlock. What I did wasn’t.”  


_Mary’s bullet wasn’t._   


“I don’t find excuses for you, John,” Sherlock answers promptly, his voice steady once again. “I see the man you can be.”  


John blinks, remembering how he’d thought the same thing about Mary. (Even though she hadn’t, right? She hadn’t seen the man he could be. If she had, maybe she wouldn’t have felt the need to run away from him, again and again.) He thinks of Sherlock and his unwavering trust, laying his own life down as an offering. He thinks of their earlier talk, when he’d used the same sentence- _Who you thought I was is the man who I want to be_ \- to talk about his wife. His partner, his lover.  


He clears his throat, blushes, looks away. Suddenly, the air around him feels too oppressive to be distilled by words. He feels Sherlock’s warmth inches away from his skin. He wants to get closer almost as much as he wants to run away.  


Sherlock returns to his chair.  


John is almost thankful for it.  


-  


“I think my best friend might be in love with me.”  


He blurts it out without realizing, chastises himself for saying it one second later.  


It must be something about his new therapist. Ella used to unnerve him with her inquisitive gaze, her serious attitude, her grave questions. He would’ve never opened up to her like this. But _her_ \- there was something familiar and comforting about her distance. She seemed miles away from him, even when she was listening. She felt like home.  


“Interesting,” she says, looking at him with curious eyes. “What makes you think that?”  


“He… did something. For me. Something dangerous. Hell, he did many dangerous things. He risked his life. He almost got sent away for… doing something he shouldn’t have.” John laughs nervously. “I do realize I’m not making any sense, but the point is… it’s not easy for me. To ask for help. Maybe that’s why I brushed it off. What he did. How he looks at me. People don’t really look at each other like that.”  


“How do people look at each other, John?”  


John blinks away a strange feeling of deja-vu. God, she really does feel familiar.  


“I don’t know. Well, he stares at everyone. He either looks too much or not at all. But they don’t matter to him. He looks at me like I matter, all the time.”  


John feels a weight drop simultaneously on and off his chest as he’s talking. He’s never really said these things out loud. Lestrade knows, Stamford has been suspecting, but he’s always played it safe through denial. A barely plausible cover story.  


Mary had known from the start. She’d looked at him like you look at a broken thing. Pity and amusement, dancing in synchronized steps on her face at his run-of-the-mill line- _I’m not gay._ He’d loved her for understanding what he wasn’t ready to accept, for loving him in spite of it. He’d hated her for loving him in all the wrong ways. The lies (her past), the bullet (Sherlock’s chest), the lies (leaving him and Rosie), the bullet ( _Go to hell, Sherlock_ ).  


“You aren’t used to it,” the therapist says in a neutral tone. Distant, comfortable.  


“I’m not used to what?”  


“Mattering to other people.”  


John laughs before she finishes her sentence, a steady wave of bitterness coursing through his veins, a soldier’s retreat. He feels his entire body getting ready for flight: rapid heartbeat, shallow breathing, muscles contracting. Ready to run. Not ready to fight back. In less than a second, he’s already planted his palms on the arms of his chair, body half-way towards sitting up.  


Then he remembers. _John Watson, get the hell on with it._ Instead of Mary’s ghost, it’s his internal voice speaking to him now, words and thoughts reclaimed as his own.  


“Yeah,” he says, taking a deep breath- a white flag, a victory-, relief and exhaustion washing over him as he sinks into the armchair once again. “I guess not.”  


-  


They find a strange kind of comfort in their routine, John minding Sherlock a couple of hours each day as Rosie either remains with Mrs. Hudson (sometimes) or joins their silences and their stories in the sitting room (often).  


“Where’s Watson?” Sherlock asks as soon as John opens the door, letting the violin fall from his shoulder as the melody comes to an abrupt halt.  


“You’ve just seen her yesterday,” John smiles. “I left her downstairs. Mrs. Hudson was really keen on letting her play with chocolate cookie dough, for some reason I can’t fathom.”  


“Please, John. Just because you prefer to avoid- and I quote, ‘making a mess’ to cater to a toddler’s developmental needs doesn’t mean that everyone else…”  


“Yeah, stop talking now, Sherlock?” John says in a light tone, making his way towards the kitchen. “I was thinking we could do that. If you wanted to,” he adds rapidly. “Playdough. You could show her how it interacts with… whatever you’ve got in here,” he says, pointing towards the warzone that is Sherlock’s chemistry-lab kitchen. “As long as nothing blows up and, you know, you don’t irreparably alter the health of my daughter.”  


Sherlock is beside him in a second.  


“Yes,” he replies.  


John looks up at him. He’s wearing that expression of bewilderment and eagerness, wide eyes scrutinizing John as if expecting to find the opposite of his words somewhere in the angle of his brow or the crease of his shirt. John feels a pang of affection and looks down as he sets the kettle to boil.  


“You’ve really taken a liking to her,” he says.  


“Yes, well. She is your daughter,” Sherlock replies.  


His resolute gaze and the solemnity in his voice take John by surprise. It sounds as simple and as real ( _obvious_ ) as if he’d stated a universal truth. _The Earth goes around the Sun. I like Rosie because I like you._  


John clears his throat, looks away. Remembers himself. He could brush it off once more, just another misplaced reply too strange to warrant a second thought, except. Well.  


He doesn’t want to, not anymore.  


So, beyond the remains of whatever self-preservation instinct he had in the first place, he looks back.  


-  


“So,” John starts, sensing a good moment to break the silence between them. It still doesn’t feel natural, the two of them in their armchairs, sipping tea as if it’s just another dull, lovely, danger-could-step-through-our-door-at-any-time day, but it’s more than John had expected. “How’s it going?”  


“John, I thought we’d established early on that small talk is not one of our fortes,” Sherlock replies. He looks better than before, his watery eyes and lithe frame slowly replaced by increasing clarity and sinew. It makes him look less like a ghost and more like the fawn-like creature John had grown used to- familiar, reassuring, sharp with a new edge of sobriety.  


“I meant how are you,” he clarifies. “With… the drugs.”  


“Oh,” Sherlock replies quietly, throwing a suspicious gaze in John's direction before looking away. “Good. It’s… good.” He nods resolutely in a way that certainly means it's not good at all. “Oh, who am I kidding. I need a distraction! At this point, I would probably murder someone myself to have a good case on my hands.” He rolls his eyes, sounding more tired than exasperated.  


“You’d have blood on your hands,” John says, amused.  


“Mmm… literally, no. You know me, I’m too careful for that. Metaphorically? Yes, but it wouldn’t be the first time.”  


John smiles despite himself, remembers how easily Sherlock had killed. For Mary. For him. He would do it again, no doubt. Or would he? Would John deserve that anymore?  


Did he ever?  


“You need to recover, Sherlock,” he says, only half-aware that he’s deflecting. “Maybe it would be a good time to learn some self-care for a change.”  


“Self? Yes. Care? Mmmnot really,” Sherlock replies with a tone of feigned boredom.  


John huffs shortly. His approach: not working. It's becoming increasingly difficult, suppressing the urge to reach out (for real, beyond advice and empty words), to say something, anything, to bridge the gap between him and this impossibly different, impossibly similar human being. His mirror. He wants to (get the hell on with it). He opens his mouth, stares at Sherlock, then closes it again.  


“What? What’s happening?” Sherlock asks, suddenly alert. A silence, a mystery, a crime scene (John).  


“Nevermind. You’ve deduced it already, probably years ago,” John says. For a second, he feels like a fool for wanting to share his secrets with someone who’s mapped them all out from the first day they’d met.  


“So? Say it anyway,” Sherlock replies, looking straight at him with those piercing eyes. John feels a shiver run through him, a tiny spark of barely-there pleasure. He remembers the army, his commanding officer, those times when similar blue eyes bore into his with a heady mix of resolve and kindness.  


He clears his throat, looks down into his teacup, now half-empty.  


“It’s about my dad.” Sherlock’s expression doesn’t change, so John feels encouraged (well, not discouraged, at least) to continue. “I know how this sounds, and this is precisely why I avoid talking about it. I don't fancy myself a victim of my childhood.”  


“Of course you don't.” Sherlock's voice is reassuringly even.  


“But I've been thinking and it made me who I am more than I'd realized. My dad, he used to drink all the time. He would shout at mom, at Harry and I, that sort of thing, then he’d sulk for hours. The beatings started later on, when Harry had already left home and started to build… well, rather to ruin her own life. It’s just… I always had the idea that addiction makes you weak, turns you into some kind of monster.”  


John looks down at his hands, realizing that he’d set down his teacup at some point while speaking and he’d curled his hands into tight, tense fists. When he looks up, he sees Sherlock’s earlier aloofness changed entirely. His eyes are soft, kind, full of warmth. He’s learning forward in his chair, as if trying to get closer on instinct.  


“So you understand why it’s difficult for me,” John continues. Sherlock’s receptivity makes things even more difficult; dirty, complicated. A part of John wishes he’d be indifferent, so they’d both brush it off and return to their usual dance of distant companionship. “To see you like that. Makes me think of him, of how I always had to be the sober one. But I know what a hypocrite I am when I'm judging you, because God knows I’m not a fucking saint either,” he finishes bitterly.  


“Good. You’re human. I was beginning to have doubts again,” Sherlock replies on a quiet, almost whispered voice, but there is also a lightness in his tone, an invitation to play, to let go.  


John gladly accepts it. He laughs affectionately, almost surprised with himself, mirroring Sherlock as they both sink back into their chairs. He feels a little lighter, a little clearer, now that his mistakes are out in the open, known by himself and by one of the two people who matter the most in his world.  


John finds himself hoping that this small act, this confession makes it less probable for Rosie to find out about his past in all the wrong ways in which he could replay it.  


He also wishes that Sherlock would be upset with him. Shout at him, punch him, kick him out, so at least the tension between them takes palpable form and dies off with a bang. There is nothing that his guilt craves more, yet Sherlock keeps looking at him with an odd expression, miles away from any kind of anger or resentment. It's hateful and absolutely perfect. It's a feeling that he could shelter in his chest for ages to come, stinging and warm, turning his blood right.  


They keep each other's gaze for a brief moment before Sherlock speaks.  


“In the time when I dismantled Moriarty’s network,” he starts slowly, sounding like he’s picking every word with the utmost care, “I… couldn’t get high. Obviously. But it was…” He stops, as if reconsidering his words, rewriting them. “What I never told you, John, about that day on the rooftop is that there was a sniper for each of you. You, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade. Moriarty made me choose between your death and mine. I had several plans laid out, but none of them involved you knowing. I didn’t think it would affect you as it did, I thought… you would just get on with your life, wait for me and welcome me back whenever I came.”  


John blinks, breathing into the silence between them, unsure about which part of Sherlock's words is the most difficult to process.  


“I was a ridiculous man, John. I know that I’ve compromised what we had. And I’m sorry.”  


They’d never talked about it again, after that time in the subway car. John had hidden his two years of panic and grief in a dark place beyond the reaches of his conscious mind, in the hope that time, married life and the occasional adrenaline would make them fade away completely.  


They hadn't.  


The wave of emotions washing through him, familiar hot-cold-hot grief and anger and self-loathing, is punctuated by something else as well. A sense of rightness, puzzle pieces finally falling into place.  


Sherlock had jumped because he wanted to save his friends. His kindness, his self-sacrificing streak had been there even as John had left the lab at St Bart’s, calling him a machine.  


Sherlock had wanted to save him.  


John had saved people all his life. He was shit at letting himself be saved, yet being Sherlock's damsel in distress had apparently been the main theme of their friendship all along.  


_What might we deduce about his heart?  
_

__

__

_Stopped, flatlined, blood seeping out onto the pavement-  
_

“So you’re saying that…” John starts, startled by how weak his voice sounds. He clears his throat, feeling the tangy taste of metal in his mouth. Blood, the muzzle of a gun- simple, straightforward. _Unlike this._  


They speak at the same time, voices mixing in cacophony.  


“I may be bollocks at showing it, but I deeply care for you.”  


“You faked your death so you could save your friends.”  


The confession steals the air right out from his lungs. It should be nothing, really- Sherlock had expressed his affection, even his love for John before - _the two people who love you most in all this world_ \- but it had been through the protective image of Mary, a third party to contain the raw, vulnerable truth. _The two people that I love and care about most in the world._ Neither of them had said it directly to each other.  


John is petrified and exhilarated by the sudden realization that _he_ , John Watson, is the intended recipient of Sherlock’s message- no third person, no alibi. _I deeply care for you. You._ It shouldn't be such a big deal. It is.  


“Jesus, Sherlock… “ he breathes out. His chest feels tight, full of something both desperate and blooming. He didn't sign up for this. It's all-encompassing, crushing the last remnants of his resistance and turning him into a raw body with a raw heart, ready to love. He did not sign up for this. Did he sign up for this? When he chose to start this conversation, when he moved in with a brilliant madman on a whim, years before?  


"Well, that’s not entirely accurate,” Sherlock intervenes. He seems, and probably is, entirely unaware of the chaos that his words had unleashed inside John. “Part of the motivation was saving you, yes, but the other part was bringing Moriarty down once and for all, which hadn’t been possible if not for…”  


John shakes his head, covering his mouth with his hand to hide a smile. He feels giddy, entirely unreasonable with the warm glow of affection clawing its way, further and further, into the cage of his chest. To hell with everything. Sherlock had confessed. If this is a crime scene, Sherlock's words have just wrapped it up, bringing years of investigations, false tracks and dead ends to their overdue death.  


“What? Where am I wrong?” Sherlock asks, looking scandalized, not seeing how he is finally, gloriously right.  


“Come here,” John says on a low, casual voice before he can think better of it. It sounds playful and inviting, even to his own ears. The disparity of it strikes him, but only for a second: he’s using his bedroom voice on _Sherlock._ He briefly wonders if he’s going mad. If he does, it feels absolutely delicious.  


Sherlock freezes. He blinks, looking like John has suddenly grown two heads, and opens his mouth, shifts slightly in his chair, then closes his mouth again. He’s gripping the arms of his chair with more force than it would be strictly necessary, brows furrowed in an (agonizing) attempt to understand.  


“Oh, for Christ’s sake…” John gets up, squares his shoulders, extends his arms towards his back, avoiding Sherlock’s gaze and hoping, maybe foolishly, that he will catch on. During what seem to be the longest ten seconds of his life, he watches Sherlock in the mirror, out of the corner of his eye, getting up from his chair with the same (amusing, maddening, endearing) expression of bewilderment.  


John looks at him questioningly, takes a tentative step closer and keeps moving as Sherlock’s expression starts shifting from surprise to understanding. He brushes his hands lightly on his waist, towards his back, stepping close enough to feel Sherlock’s body heat through his robe, but not enough to fully embrace him. Sherlock freezes.  


“Is this alright?” John asks, trying to keep his voice steady. He’s looking down, fixing a point on Sherlock’s chest, blue satin with white cotton beneath - warm, alive and incredibly close. He wants to trace the line where the world ends and Sherlock begins, to feel the steadfast comfort of his sinewy muscle, the maddening drum of his heart.  


“Yes,” Sherlock answers immediately, as if John’s words had shaken him out of his stupor. He takes a step forward and wraps his long arms around John as he did before: one hand on the back of his neck, another one heavy and warm on his back. John’s breath hitches at the contact, his muscle memory leading him back to the first time he’d felt these touches. He’d tried not to think about it, then, and he’d forced himself to stay still even as a part of him despaired for more.  


Now, he’s startingly aware of every meeting point between their bodies. The hand on his neck is an electric, stinging heat. Sherlock’s cheek is a warm comfort against his ear, his hair. Their chests, almost meeting, parallel heartbeats. There are no more shields to hide them from each other. He could breathe on Sherlock’s collarbone, if he wanted to, he could tear the fabric of his shirt and taste the skin beneath. John closes the distance between them until their bodies are no longer isolated from each other and revels in the continuous, merged line of them.  


He registers himself letting a deep breath out at the contact. For how long had this need been lodging inside his chest, dying to come out? It’s different from their hug from a few weeks before, when John had grieved and Sherlock had offered and offered. Grief and fear, replaced by curiosity and the warm bloom of affection. John rests his head somewhere between Sherlock’s shoulder and chest, inhaling the mixed scent of cigarette smoke and black pepper shower gel and _Sherlock_ , and he allows himself to truly, madly feel at home.  


“John,” Sherlock whispers, his warm breath dangerously close to John’s ear, doing things that John would rather not think about, not yet. _Well, what did you expect, a friendly hug and a pat on the back?_ Mary’s amused voice echoes in his mind. He smiles against Sherlock’s shirt.  


“Mm?”  


“There wasn’t a single day during those two years when I didn’t think about you. I thought I was craving a hit, but I was missing you.” A shudder runs down John's spine at the words as he feels Sherlock’s voice vibrating in his chest and echoing in his own, a low, heady rumble. This is it, he supposes; the point of no return. “That doesn't mean you need to save me, or always be the sober one. It just means I'll always prefer a life with you than without.”  


“Yeah,” is all that John manages to say. “Me too.”  


Sherlock’s low, magnetic voice coupled with their closeness slows John's rational brain down and gives way for other parts of him- immediate, instinctual, needy- to take control. He lets his hands shift a little lower on Sherlock's back, holding tight. Safe, loved, wanting; all the things he'd felt in Sherlock's arms dream after dream, before waking up and pushing it back under the rug, he feels now, thousandfold. He wants to take every inch of warmth between them and meld it into closeness and pleasure.  


Before John gets a chance to panic at the thought, Sherlock buries his nose in his hair and… sniffs? the top of his head. John blinks, as if awakened from a reverie, then pulls back slightly in surprise.  


“What are you doing?”  


“Sniffing the top of your head,” Sherlock replies dismissively, as if he was stating something entirely obvious. “Isn’t that what everyone does to show affection?”  


“Sh... “John laughs, giddy with affection. “No, it definitely isn’t,” he smiles. They still haven’t let go of each other and John is looking, really looking now- the ivory angles of Sherlock's cheekbones, the tempting line of his lips, his impossibly dilated pupils. His head is swimming a little with the unlikeliness, the strangeness of it all. Sherlock knows he's looking. He can't stop.  


“Oh. Dull,” Sherlock replies, but his eyes are in an entirely different conversation with John's. “Not good?”  


“Bit different from my day,” John explains, cocking his head slightly, “but… good. Very good.”  


If he’d been reluctant to meet Sherlock’s gaze only minutes before, John realizes that he can’t stop looking now, years of avoidance, tension and unbridled loyalty alchemized into the taut, invisible line connecting their gazes. There’s desire there, woven tightly with a whole lot of affection, and John can’t stop smiling as he takes in the flush spreading on Sherlock’s cheeks, breath by shaky breath. _He looks at me as if he adores me,_ John’s brain barely processes, engulfed by Sherlock’s warm eyes. A similar feeling has found a way into his own chest, like a wild animal lodged there for comfort. Soft, flushed, chaotic.  


He lets his arms fall to his sides, lifts them again to Sherlock’s shoulders. Licks his lips.  


“If you want to,” he says, not even sure about how he would finish his sentence if he felt lucid enough to see it to its end. His heart is beating wildly and he feels light-headed, entranced somewhere between _god, yes, now_ and _too much._  


“I do,” Sherlock says softly, raising his hand to cup John’s cheek. Long fingers, slightly cold; the promise of warmth. The gesture gives John the courage to lean in and press their lips together in a chaste touch, feather-light and firm at the same time, more of a question than a statement. He pulls back, taking in Sherlock’s reaction.  


His eyebrows are slightly furrowed and he’s licking his lips, as if trying to catalogue the pressure and the taste of John’s. It’s such a Sherlock-like reaction that John can’t help but smile, moving one hand to cup this impossible man’s cheek and running his thumb over the smooth skin there.  


“Alright?” he asks. Sherlock’s face softens up and he smiles back, pressing their foreheads together, his breath ghosting on John’s lips. Warm, _alive._ There’s nothing John wants more than to taste it.  


“God, yes,” Sherlock breathes, closing the distance between them. They share small, tentative kisses (this is really happening), cupping each other’s faces like they’re holding something incredibly precious (which they are). It’s tender, unfocused, a little tense; uncharted territory. Sherlock’s eyes are closed (John knows because his aren’t, not entirely) and his lips are incredibly soft, a contrast to the sharp sinew of his body. John isn’t surprised that Sherlock doesn’t seem to entirely know what he’s doing. It allows him to take the lead, finally threading with surer steps on a path that he knows all too well- the action and feedback loop of pleasure, the simple, straightforward dance of bodies melding together. He slides his hand down to rest on the warm skin of Sherlock’s neck as he sucks on his bottom lip.  


It feels like lightning after soft rain, intensified by the way Sherlock looks at him through half-dropped eyelids. Intoxicated. Thirsty. _Loving._ This is, it turns out, less simple than it has ever been before. John runs his fingers across the silky skin of Sherlock’s neck, his jaw, his lips. Settles it on his chest, where his heart is thumping wildly, and kisses him again, this time allowing his hunger to get the best of him as he tastes and sucks and bites. It starts building up slowly and ends up a frantic rhythm that has them opening their mouths to each other, John’s thigh sliding between Sherlock’s long legs, bodies pressed together insistently. They both moan into the kiss when their tongues meet, sharing heat and breath and sound, sharing- finally- the parts of them that they’d kept hidden all along, while their bodies inhabited the same space and their minds played the same frenzied, adrenaline-fueled game.  


John alternates between kissing and sucking on Sherlock’s lips and going deeper, taking his mouth with all the thoroughness and patience that he can muster. God, it’s enough to make his blood boil; feeling Sherlock warm and pliant and fiery beneath his lips, beneath his wandering hands. The heat between them is crackling fire, impossible to hide as their erections brush through the (maddening) layer of their trousers.  


“Chair,” John breathes, pushing Sherlock towards his usual sitting place as gently as he can before straddling his hips. Sherlock looks dazed, glassy-eyed, but the affection in his eyes makes him look more sober than John had ever seen him. His surrender lights up something primal in John’s blood, a desire to take him even further, to see him come apart at the seams; the bare honesty in his eyes, in his shaking hands, in the thirst with which he kisses back, make John want to shelter him from the world in a cocoon of gentleness and praise. Between the two, John dances.  


Had anyone touched Sherlock like this before? _God._ John had thought about it, in the dark privacy of his own mind, the only place that people couldn’t see, couldn’t talk about. Just like he’d done with James in Afghanistan, after long hours of staring at the sun and talking with no filter, except- that one. The one that said- _don’t think of him like that.  
_

But he had.  


And now, he wants Sherlock. He wants his mouth, his neck, his cock, his mind, his heart. There is no single part of this man that he would not have, and the immensity of his desire is both a weight and a relief.  


_I’ll have no queers crossing my threshold, do you hear me?  
_

Then Harry’s voice, bold and broken: _But Dad, I’ve been here all along.  
_

He sighs into Sherlock’s mouth, the sense of _wrong wrong wrong_ crushed by something much more powerful and brave and beautiful. That _something_ has him moving his hips of their own accord, moaning against Sherlock’s open lips, running his hands through Sherlock’s hair as he leans in.  


“I want to hear everything,” John says, surprised at how hoarse his voice sounds. “You, before. College. The Work. Those two years, those we never talk about. I’ve been wondering for ages, you know. Your brilliant mind is always on display, but this.” He splays his fingers on Sherlock’s chest, where his heart is. “Will you let me?”  


Sherlock looks up at him with an expression that does unspeakable things to John’s heart. There’s tenderness and there’s fear, affection, lust and sadness, bringing John back to the days when they’d first met and Sherlock had been so young, so restless and reckless. Impossible to break. And now he’s here, having been broken time and time again, his eyes glassy and pleading, his lips swollen under John’s thumb as he leans in and…  


“John. I can’t.”  


It’s barely a whisper, but it sends a chill down John’s spine nevertheless. He pulls back immediately, removing himself from Sherlock’s chair, and crouches down in front of him, steadying himself with one hand on Sherlock’s knee.  


“Jesus. Are you okay?” he asks, his brain taking command over his body as he looks at Sherlock, scanning for damage, rummaging for mistakes.  


He’d messed up. He suddenly feels cold all over, pulse hammering away at the realization that the man in front of him has been hurt, again, by his doing, again. John shouldn’t have let his heart and his hunger loose. He shouldn’t have spoken to Sherlock, out of a sudden, as if he had any right to his past, to his heart-  


“Yeah. No. I don’t know!” Sherlock says, frustration creeping into his voice as he sits up, almost causing John to fall over. He starts pacing through the room. Picks up his violin, puts it down again. Finally, with his back at John, he speaks.  


“You should go, John.”  


He’s trying for indifference, but John’s not buying it for one second. Sherlock’s voice is trembling and… are his hands shaking? John takes two steps and he’s immediately at his side, hand on his shoulder as worry coils in his stomach where arousal had been just a minute ago.  


Sherlock shakes him off instantly, jumping as if he’d been burnt.  


“John, I said go!” he says, his tone frustrated, but not sharp enough to be mistaken for anger. “Please,” he adds in a weaker voice. He looks years older than he’d looked mere minutes ago. His eyes are weary, vulnerable. They’re asking for something, but John doesn’t understand what it is, and he doubts that Sherlock himself has access to that information. The detective’s cheeks are still flushed, but his body is that of a scared animal- disorganized, trembling, working against him. Trying to protect him. From what?  


John wants to take him in his arms. He can’t.  


“Alright,” he says, clearing his throat. “Okay.”  


He doesn’t know what else to say. _I’m sorry_ would be laughable, a cheap plaster over the wounds that John has inflicted on him time and time again. _What happened to you? You don’t have to be afraid of anything as long as you’re with me?_  


John knows that’s not true, not anymore. Despite his raging instincts to _stay_ and to _protect_ , he picks up his coat and closes the door behind him once again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags updated. 
> 
> This chapter includes a brief description of a panic attack, so if this is a trigger for you, you might want to turn back.
> 
> Enjoy!

_~~Dear Sherlock  
To the best and wisest man I know~~  
Sherlock,_

_I don’t know how you’re supposed to forgive someone for the same mistake again and again. I don’t expect you to._

_Before we forget all about yesterday and carry on with our lives as if nothing happened (it’s definitely not what I want, but knowing us, it’s one of the most likely outcomes), there are some things you should know._

_After Mary died, I desperately looked for something, someone to blame, to ease the guilt. You were the closest person to me. I blamed you for being a smart arse, for being yourself, for being the man I’d fallen for all those years ago._

_Meeting Mary has been both the best and the worst thing that could’ve happened to me while you were away. It meant that I still had a future (or so I thought). But it was a future without you._

_On some level, I hated myself for not waiting for you, so I’ve been spending the last years trying to punish you for a crime you didn’t commit._

_I’m sorry._

_I would erase it if I could. Back to solving crimes and rows with chipping machines, back to tea and simple, straightforward adrenaline. But that might mean I’d have never found the guts to admit how much I care about you, and that’s not a timeline I’m particularly interested in anymore._

_You’re alive, you’re out there, and I like you._

_“I like you” is an understatement, by the way. What I mean is- I’d like you to stay with me, through all of this, whatever “this” is. I’m not leaving you again, not if you want me to stick around._

_That’s pretty much the best I can do right now. It’s shit, but it is what it is._

_I plan to leave this somewhere in the apartment without you noticing, by the way. You’ll definitely notice. It’s comforting how some things never change._

_Yours,  
John_

-

When Eurus shoots him, the letter is tucked in the left pocket of his jacket. John wakes up heavy-headed to a mess of broken glass on the floor and to Sherlock’s panicked face close to his. _Nice eyes_ , he thinks, staring up into a grey-blue frown. He mirrors it unconsciously. It hurts. He remembers that something is wrong, but the details elude him, dissipating away from his conscious mind like smoke in open air. Although he knows there is blood- he can feel the ripe, pungent smell of it-, there’s no pain registering in his body. 

In the still-spinning room, he registers Sherlock taking his pulse with one hand and holding his phone in the other. Probably calling Lestrade for the therapist in the airing cupboard, John thinks absently, hoping she’s still alive, then he dozes off again.

-

“Come home with me,” John offers without a second thought a few days later. He’s soaked to the bone, the shock blanket a feeble attempt to shelter him from the crisp night air. The panic in his chest- his throat, his lungs as he was gasping for air- has subsided, leaving him weary, bitter and relieved as his adrenaline levels are slowly coming back to normal.

Eurus is being taken away, restored to her prison. Sherlock is safe. Exhausted in more than one way, but safe. And John- he could still be holding the slick, freezing skull of Sherlock’s childhood best friend, he could be drowning, struggling to keep his head above water while Sherlock is trying to placate his sister. 

He isn’t currently doing any of these things. He’s about to go home, bury his nose in Rosie’s soft curls and, most of all, sleep away the chill in his body to the last drop. As it is after any near-death experience- and (thank) God, he’s had enough of those-, being alive isn’t half that bad. 

“Why?” Sherlock asks, looking at John questioningly. 

“Because Mycroft is the alternative, and as much as you’re making progress towards brotherly love, I doubt you want to be around him right now.”

Sherlock gives a curt nod. They sit in silence in Greg’s car, John sinking in the chair in the limits of decency while Sherlock looks outside the window at the blurring, dusk-tinted landscape. His spine is tall, his shoulders squared. John wonders about the tension gathered there, imagines smoothing it out with his fingers. He would be gentle at first, then he would let his hands feel their way through, methodically squeezing every drop of stress and strain out of Sherlock’s body. His girlfriends had told him that he gives good massages. Would Sherlock agree?

Using the last of his brainpower, he calls his neighbor, the kind, sharp elderly lady who’s been his safety net for Rosie ever since Mary’s death, and explains things to her in as few words as possible. Even though he thanks her and apologizes once again for the short notice, the edge in her voice is unmistakable. John postpones feeling guilty. He’d just witnessed a suicide, four murders and a revelation. He’d (barely) missed his meeting with death at the bottom of a well in the middle of nowhere. If anything, his parenting skills have nowhere to go than up from here.

They arrive as the first rays of dawn start bursting from beyond the horizon- bright shades of pink and orange, exhilaratingly alive, a little violent to John’s weary eyes. They pick up a half-asleep Rosie from next door and he holds her tight as she wraps her little arms around him. Sherlock is looking at them with unmistakable warmth in his eyes and John has the sudden urge to hug him as well. He wants to build a fort around them, to keep them out of harm’s way- the two people he cares about most in the world.

He’s finding out, more and more, that he can’t build that fort alone.

“John,” Sherlock says, taking a step towards him.

John sinks into the hug, wrapping his left arm around Sherlock while he’s holding Rosie with his right. He allows himself to feel every ounce of comfort and safety that the moment offers- the three of them, alive against all odds. 

They take turns looking out for Rosie as the other one is showering. When John returns from the bathroom, Rosie is fast asleep in her crib and Sherlock has dozed off on the couch, still sitting up. His mouth is slightly ajar and he’s leaning to one side as if he’s about to tip over. 

Greg would want to film this.

John only wants to picture it, to save it for bad days, because it triggers a pang of affection and a sense of rightness that he can’t explain, as if this portrait of domesticity is the manifestation of his wildest dreams, which he knows it isn’t. He had a family, a home, a life with Mary and he was unsatisfied, terminally bored, desperately needing an adrenaline fix. What would make it different now?

He gently maneuvers Sherlock into lying down. He brings a blanket from the bedroom and tucks him in, brushes a few rebel curls from his forehead, listens to him breathe. His hand strays, as if of its own accord, towards Sherlock’s forehead, but he manages to stop himself half-way. He blinks, then decides- _to hell with it._

Sherlock’s skin is warm and John doesn’t know if the touch is meant to comfort Sherlock or himself. His pulse jumps when Sherlock moves his head slightly, so that John’s hand is cupping the left side of his forehead and his upper cheek. He stays like this for a while, following Sherlock’s chest rising and falling with his breath, feeling his own heart rate stabilize and his brain slip into comfortable alpha waves.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, only waking up with aching muscles, his lower body on the floor and his head resting on his hands somewhere near Sherlock’s stomach. Still dazed with dreaming, he drags his feet to the bedroom and falls back asleep within minutes.

-

Sherlock sleeps for fifteen hours straight, even as Rosie wakes up and starts crying, her shrill voice loud enough to wake an entire regiment. Even as John opens the window, letting some fresh air in alongside the noise of mid-day London, Sherlock’s eyes stay closed, his body curled into a fetal position as much as the sofa allows him.  
It happens the next day, then the day after. On the fourth night, John is startled awake by a shout coming from the living room. He jumps out of bed in a flash, his amygdala sending instant messages to his body, danger, _danger_ \- heart pumping blood to his sleepy limbs, body ready to fight back. 

He finds Sherlock on the living room floor. He’s kneeling on his blanket, with his eyes glassy and his chest heaving. Sweaty curls are sticking to his forehead and his mouth is open; he’s gasping for air. John kneels down, his attention narrowing on the man in front of him as a sensation of calm, focused determination washes over him.

“Sherlock, look at me. Breathe. Count with me, alright? One… two…”

“I’m fine, John,” Sherlock croaks, but his hand is clawing at John’s arm and he’s still trying to gulp for air like a drowning man. 

“Of course you are, but you’re having a panic attack, yes?” John replies, his voice even as a part of him is secretly amused (and charmed) by Sherlock’s eternal stubbornness when faced with the unknown. “You need to control your breathing, activate your parasympathetic nervous system so your body stops feeling like it’s under threat,” he says, hoping that the explanation will appeal to as much of Sherlock’s rational side as he can access right now.

“Alright, doctor,” Sherlock breathes, and it would be endearing if it wouldn’t break John’s heart to see him- hear him- like this the second time in one week.

They count together for a couple of minutes, their breaths in sync until Sherlock’s hands stop shaking and his eyes become clearer in the faint light coming from the streetlamps below. John is taken aback, once again, by how pale and vulnerable he looks, especially here and now, caught between his own big brain and, as it turns out, his equally telling body. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, placing one hand on Sherlock’s shoulder.

“Yes,” comes the immediate reply. “Thank you. That was… unexpected,” Sherlock continues, sounding more like his usual self. “Been a while since I had one of these.”

“Wanna talk about it?” John asks tentatively. 

“I’d rather not.” He gets up, placing the blankets back on the sofa with more meticulosity than the situation would require.

“Alright, then. Try to go back to sleep, yeah?” John replies, hearing the soft rustle of blankets as he turns around towards the bedroom.

He stops midway, finally grasping the reason why his heart is still beating wildly in his chest, even if Sherlock is safe now. 

The memory of those interminable nights, self-portraits in cold sweat and terminal, desperate meaninglessness, crisis (or lack thereof) etched in his trembling hands as he was begging for a quiet sleep that refused to come. Before Sherlock. After Sherlock’s fall. After Mary’s death. John has tried to forget them, mostly successful when Sherlock was there to drag him into the whirlwind of his erratic days, mostly failing when he wasn’t. 

Something fierce and protective coils in his chest. He doesn’t want Sherlock to experience any of that darkness, not more than he already has.

“Do you wanna come with me?” 

Sherlock stares, blinking into the half-obscurity of the living room, his normally tamed curls sticking out in all directions. An ambulance siren is wailing distantly on the streets below. 

“In my bed, I mean. In my bedroom. To sleep.” John mouths a curse, hoping that the dim light is working in his favour and Sherlock can’t read his expression. He’s afraid of what the detective might find there.

They listen to the ambulance siren fade out, leaving the room eerily quiet once again.

“Are you sure? Because I’m way beyond the point of being able to say no,” Sherlock says, his voice barely more than a whisper. It’s surreal, that voice saying those particular words, bare of any attempt to control the output. The world stills as the fiery creature lodged in John’s chest coils and coils.

“Yeah. I’m sure,” John answers, realizing that he’d been holding his breath. 

It feels like the most intimate thing they’ve ever done- Sherlock on the edge of John’s bed, taking off his shirt to replace it with a dry one while John slides under the blanket, turning on his side. Sherlock lying down, first on his back, then on his side to face John. There’s so much space they could occupy separately, yet they choose to look at each other, heads resting on their arms, toes almost touching.

Sherlock’s gaze is open, vulnerable. He doesn’t seem to make any efforts to disguise his fading panic, his weariness, his affection. John allows himself to think of how, in different circumstances, Sherlock would be exactly the type of person to wear his heart on his sleeve- entirely, whole-heartedly human, unafraid to show his kindness. He would be? He is. John looks back, finally feeling that this, here, is real; that in his own broken, fucked-up way, maybe he still has something to offer, and he is willing to do so if Sherlock wants it.  


He rubs his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, traces downward on his arm, then slides it around his waist, looking at him with a silent question. As an answer, Sherlock drops his eyelids and shifts closer, circling John’s waist with his free hand and burying his head into the crook of John’s neck.

John shudders against his better judgment. He takes a deep breath, inhaling Sherlock’s scent- peppermint shampoo, warm skin, the slight trace of sweat. _Home._ He rests his hand heavy on Sherlock’s back, letting it slide up and down in a soothing motion. The fact that Sherlock lets his guard down around him, even after all that’s passed between them, amazes John to no end. Before he realizes it, he plants a small kiss on Sherlock’s head, holding him tighter.

He feels the tension slip away from Sherlock’s body as a contented sigh escapes his lungs. Warmth pools in John’s chest, bittersweet gratefulness for having the privilege of holding such a brilliant, mad, wonderful human being in his arms and of calling him his… best friend? his partner? Gradually, he allows his thoughts to melt into silence, his world to shrink down to the points of contact between him and his Sherlock as his body relaxes into their shared warmth, lulled towards sleep.  
-  
“I understand that Sherlock is being taken care of,” Mycroft says in his usual curt tone, one that doesn’t entirely work to hide his weariness.

“Yes, he is,” John replies, straightening a little in his office chair. It’s not usual for Mycroft to call him directly instead of showing off the many ways in which he has control over the British world, so John supposes that something has changed. Not much hasn’t, since Sherrinford. “You probably know that we’ve started rebuilding the flat. He’s… keeping busy. Still shaken, but it gives him something to focus on.”

“So, you’ll be moving back in, then?”

“I… “ John hesitates. They haven’t really talked about it, him and Sherlock. It just sort of happened, Sherlock dragging John along to the flat to help, John lending a hand more than willingly. It felt that his home, too, had been blown up; their home, theirs to rebuild. “Yeah, I think so,” John says.

“Good,” Mycroft replies, then pauses. He says the next words deliberately, as if he’d thought of them for a long time. “Even though the circumstances leading to it have been most unfortunate… I am happy. He needs you, John.”

John narrows his eyes, idly tracing the cold metal arm of his chair. They did this now, he supposed. The talking, the honesty. No more beating around the bush. John knows this from his days in the army: when there’s shared trauma, it’s difficult to keep up with old feuds and petty dramas. Words become clearer, cleaner- sharper or softer, depending on the case. 

“I only hope that what transpired between you at the hospital won’t happen again,” Mycroft continues with the slightest hint of threat in his voice. _Ah- there it is,_ John thinks, a shiver running down his spine despite himself. “I place my trust in a very limited number of people, and I hope I was not wrong to have confidence in you.”

For the first time, John can’t snark back at him, reassert his boundaries, mock him. _Of course he knows_. The person who has dedicated his entire life to Sherlock’s protection knows that John has beaten him bloody in one of the moments when Sherlock had needed him the most- and he’s right to doubt him. Mycroft’s words echo the cold weight in John’s stomach, the nausea, the twitch in his hand as his muscle memory betrays the imprint of past violence.

“I promise you, Mycroft, it won’t happen again,” he says. “There are few things I regret more than that day, and I mean it when I say I will use the rest of my time with Sherlock to make up for it.”

 _Drama queen,_ Mary’s disembodied voice says, but it’s with an affectionate kind of irony. _Not really,_ John replies. _Not if I mean it._

“Good,” Mycroft replies, seeming satisfied with his answer. “Have a good day, Doctor Watson. And… see you soon.”

-  
They haven’t talked about John’s bedroom in the new 221B, or the lack thereof. Whenever the subject of his old room comes up, Sherlock immediately mentions nursery furniture and children’s books and educative toys, making John wonder exactly how long-term is this arrangement of theirs. Does Sherlock want to see Rosie grow up? Will they raise her together? If his old room will be her new bedroom, where will he sleep?

He doesn’t allow himself to think about it too much, lest he starts hoping. He doesn’t know how that particular feeling would fit in his life, in the marred territory between his ribs. If life has taught him something, it’s that taking things as they are is the safer- and saner- bet when confronted with the flippant, dizzying alternative of hope.

“We can think of turning 221C into a new bedroom,” Sherlock says one day as he’s flipping through the burnt pages of what used to be his _Numismatique française_.

“Yeah, that sounds good,” John says, trying to hide his disappointment.

“Of course, you would be too far from Rosie’s room then.”

The alternative remains hanging in the air between them, unspoken.

-  
They don’t talk about the nightmares, but it’s not a challenge for John to realize what they’re about. It’s written in the way Sherlock shifts closer to him whenever he wakes up in a panic, seeking comfort. While he’s taking deep, steadying breaths, he wraps his arms around John’s waist, his shoulders, his back, touching him as if he’s making sure of his realness. He rests his forehead on John’s or buries his face in his neck, all previous boundaries momentarily forgotten as his fingers hold and grip tight, afraid to lose.

He shouts Victor’s name more than once. He shouts John’s name as well, and sometimes whispers it in the crook of his neck.

John holds him and holds him and holds him through it, hoping it’s enough for his body to relearn the feeling of safety.

-  
John understands Mycroft’s implied promise when he shows up at his doorstep a couple of days after their phone conversation, right when John is leaving to work. _Bloody punctual government fairy,_ , he thinks, rolling his eyes out of habit more than a real sense of annoyance.

“Hello, Doctor Watson,” Mycroft says, smiling his half-amicable, half-plastered smile. To his credit, he doesn’t seem entirely displeased to be there. He’s wearing a café au lait suit with a buttoned-up shirt beneath, an outfit that makes him look significantly more… human. It’s an unlikely picture; family business, then.

Sherlock sneaks up behind John’s back in the hallway, holding a sleepy Rosie in his arms. He doesn’t seem surprised at all. A flurry of Holmeses apparently cooperating for the first time in their life- with no one getting abducted, threatened, insulted or shot at- must mean that it’s a special occasion. 

“Don’t worry, John, I talked to Mrs Hudson and she can babysit Rosie for the day,” Sherlock says, brushing past John and slipping out the front door. 

Some part of all this- Sherlock holding his daughter and leaving with Mycroft, _voluntarily_ \- hits him as heart-wrenchingly domestic. He plants a goodbye kiss on Rosie’s cheek. He resists the urge to move a mere few inches to the left and repeat the gesture with Sherlock, choosing to briefly nod towards the detective instead.

“So, family meeting, then?” 

“Of course,” Mycroft replies with a honeyed smile, closing the door behind him.

-  
They’ve managed to remake about half of the living room, the bathroom and some of the kitchen. The wallpaper design, the sofa, the table aren’t too far off from the originals- Sherlock knows the right people owning the right vintage furniture businesses, of course- but many of his things have been swallowed by the fire, making the place look empty and eerily new.

To John it feels like familiar and uncharted territory at the same time, an old project revisited, redacted and possibly improved (with a cost). He’s tempted to feel like an intruder, but the way Sherlock welcomes him into his space day by day leaves no place for doubt. He is wanted. In a ridiculous flash, he imagines Sherlock saying this (because it’s something that Sherlock would say, if he knew how to): _You are wanted_. He bites back a smile, absently tidying up the past week’s newspapers under the new (identical, clinically white-lighted) lamp near the desk, and allows the incurable romantic in him imagine saying it back.

“So, how was it?” he asks. “You’ve been to Sherrinford, right?”

“Obviously,” Sherlock replies with a hint of a smile. He’s lying on the couch, long hands together against his chin; his thinking posture. It still looks handsome on him, especially now, in the late afternoon glow. It makes him look younger. “I played,” he continues. “She sat with her back to me, didn’t turn once.”

He springs from the sofa in one elegant move, crouching down to rummage in one of the cardboard boxes he’d had brought over. John had spent an entire evening with him in an antique bookstore on a quest to remake the old library, surprised by some of the titles he’d never taken the time to examine while he was still living in 221B. _Jane Eyre. The Psychology of Play. Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information. The Courage To Be._ All essentially, ridiculously Sherlock, a portrait of him from different, yet equally telling angles.

“Do you think she’ll come around? If you keep going?”

Sherlock looks up and shrugs, his expression unreadable. The last evening is explainable in the light of today’s events; Sherlock had fidgeted until he’d finally turned his back to John, trying to salvage the night for at least one of them. With his hand resting on Sherlock’s back, John had fallen asleep before him.

“I don’t know,” Sherlock replies. “When I found her at Musgrave, she seemed lost, helpless. Like a child who needs to be guided. I don’t know if I’m the right guide, and if I am, I’m afraid it’s too late for her.”

“It might not be,” John says, surprising himself. “Look at all of this,” he continues. Sherlock looks pointedly at him, then lets his gaze wander across the room. It still looks like a battlefield: dusty floors and shelves, books that Sherlock didn’t want to throw out even though they were almost unreadable because of the damage, piles of old things and new things and, beyond all of it, an emptiness waiting to collect her rent and to be given form again. “Some things take time to rebuild, after the shock. You were her shock. Now maybe you’re helping her rebuild, as much as it’s possible. Even if that might not be as much as you’d want.”

It might be the most hopeful statement he’d allowed himself in a while. Sherlock seems to understand- he’s looking at John kindly, but also questioningly, as if he’s trying to see if John was only talking about Eurus or if there’s something more beyond his words. John has the urge to look away, to avoid letting that string of hope unfurl to a bitter end. _It is what it is._ Whatever his happy ending should have been, it’s long gone now. Like Eurus, he can only rebuild from the ashes.

“Stop that,” Sherlock says.

“Stop what?”

“Thinking,” then, softer, “I saw your face when Mycroft was trying to convince me to kill you.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” John replies defensively, surprised by the change in subject. 

Sherlock doesn’t reply. Instead, he gets up to arrange some of the books he’d found in the cardboard box, stacking them neatly on the top shelf near the window. He’s still not using any classification system; with his eidetic memory, John doubts he’d need it. “I don’t know how to do this, John. This…isn’t easy for me. I thought it could be, for a moment, but as you saw back there, it’s really not.”

John purses his lips, feels his pulse quicken fractionally. Sherlock isn’t talking about Eurus or Sherrinford anymore.

“What I’m trying to say is that… I heard you,” Sherlock continues. “Some things take time to rebuild. But they _can_ be rebuilt. And I want you to know that I’d like to. Rebuild them with you, that is. As much as it’s possible for us.”

He clears his throat, turning around to face John after he finishes speaking. Expectant, vulnerable. 

It feels a little like a shifting dream, too good to be true for more than a passing heartbeat. It’s probably why the words cascade out of John with dizzying speed, as if one more second might mean one more lost opportunity. 

“After that evening, I wrote you a letter,” he says. “I had it with me in my session with Eurus, then… I might’ve lost it in the hospital, at Mycroft’s, I don’t know. The bottom line is… God, it was so much easier to write it than to say it.” He looks away, a burst of nervous laughter escaping his throat. 

Sherlock looks at him, waiting, listening.

“Ok. What I want to say is that… I’m here, too. For you. If you’ll have me. Your sister killed your best friend. You repressed the memory and spent the rest of your life thinking you didn’t have a heart. It would be crazy if this were easy for you. And me? I’ve made my mistakes, and God knows I’ve been a terrible friend and a bloody awful doctor while at it. I’m bollocks at this, Sherlock. But I want to.”

“Thank you,” Sherlock replies softly, and when John looks, really _looks_ , it’s impossible to stop. The subtle shift between them seems to surprise Sherlock as much as it does John. For a few moments, they face each other in silence, as if the world has found a new way of turning and they’re still trying to make sense of it. Sherlock tips the balance by closing some of the distance between them in two wide steps and reaching down towards John’s hand, interlacing their fingers with tentative slowness.

John smiles and shakes his head as Sherlock holds his hand in both of his larger (shaky?) palms. Just holds it, no superfluous movement, no attempt to strip the moment bare of what it really is. It makes John want to run and hold and _stay_ at the same time, so he looks away, heart hammering away in his chest with the contradiction. It feels right and raw, too much gathered between them to hold in one touch of the hand. 

“I’ll keep going. To Sherrinford,” Sherlock says on a low, almost hushed voice, and it sounds like a love confession. He’s close enough for John to feel the huff of his breath- tea, crackers, the bitter echo of smoke. It brings up the memory of how it felt intertwined with his. “Mycroft and our parents will come too, eventually, if… she responds well. You can come too. I’d like you to.”

An emotionally immature, sociopathic murderer who killed Sherlock’s childhood best friend and would have done the same to him, out of jealousy? It still sends a chill down John’s spine to think about her. But Sherlock is offering something more than he lets on, here, and John wants. 

“Yes,” he replies. “If you want me to, I’ll be there. With you.”

“Thank you,” Sherlock replies. The affection in his eyes is bare and overwhelming and John can’t do much else but look back, again and again, the warm touch of their hands the only anchoring point in a rapidly shifting universe. Paradoxically, the feeling he was afraid to be consumed by- if he stopped and looked at Sherlock long enough, if he really allowed himself to _see_ \- doesn’t alarm him anymore. Instead of coiling in a tight, tense rope, threatening to suffocate, it’s glowing, radiating outwards. He brushes his thumb on the hard skin of Sherlock’s hand, a monument to the Work in all its vices and virtues, and smiles.

When Sherlock leans in to plant a kiss on the corner of his mouth, he can’t contain a laugh escaping his throat, pure, ridiculous joy running through his veins. He feels giddy like a teenager.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter! I've updated the rating and the tags. Enjoy!

“She didn’t want me to stay alive,” Sherlock says one night, nestled in John’s arms. “I was supposed to die from it.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” John says, rubbing soothing circles on his back. 

He knows Sherlock isn’t talking about Eurus.

-  
After that, the nightmares become rarer and less intense. Sherlock keeps waking up in the middle of the night, but it takes less and less time for his body to calm down and his mind to drift off to sleep. 

Neither of them mentions turning 221C into a bedroom again. 

-  
John keeps thinking of how Sherlock’s strong body goes soft in his arms at night, how he wants and keeps wanting more every time their bodies shift closer on their separate orbits. After years of blindfolded, suppressed desire, one afternoon had been enough to break his defenses down and open the floodgates. An accidental touch of the hand, a turn of the head to reveal the pale column of Sherlock’s neck, their bodies occupying the same space, shared warmth and movement- they all make John’s day a fantasy from beginning to end, part of it gloriously fulfilled (Sherlock close to him, Sherlock’s heart in his hands without hiding), part of it a constant thrum of unfulfilled desire coursing through his veins (their hips, snapping together; Sherlock’s mouth on his cock, Sherlock moaning under him as he opens him up). It’s ridiculous, John thinks, to want someone so much. Entirely unreasonable for his age.

He loves every moment of it with an intensity bordering on masochistic.

-  
It shifts on the day when they’re done with the living room. John paints the wallpaper with a replica of the old smiley face and Sherlock puts a hole through it, this time not out of frustration, but as a fond memory of it. 

They’re finally back home.

John’s eyes crinkle at the corners as he watches Sherlock dashing around the room with Rosie in his arms, showing her every little (new, strange, fascinating) detail as Mrs. Hudson looks on from the doorway. John puts an arm around her when he notices her watery eyes; she excuses herself, saying something about sentimentalism and old age, but John only smiles wider, the warmth in his chest telling him that this is less about being dramatic and more about seeing someone they love finally, gloriously happy. 

As if Sherlock’s bullet had shattered a fragile balance, Lestrade calls them on a case that afternoon, possibly given the green light by Mycroft, whom, to John’s surprise (but not really), Sherlock was now talking to every other day. It’s their first case after Eurus, a race against time, two murders in different parts of the city in less than two hours, with Sherlock sure that the killer will strike again on the clock. He drags John through the heart of London, deducing the murderer’s location by his footprints and his brand of cigarettes until they finally find him in a shady café, talking to his next victim.

The motives are nothing special- murderous jealousy, drug abuse- but the ensuing chase is enough to get their blood boiling and put them in mild danger when it turns out the man had an accomplice on guard, ready to jump in if anything went wrong. When they’re finally back at 221B, panting and laughing with adrenaline and relief, John is ecstatic with how much he had missed this. The uncertainty, the ever-changing rules of the game, the thrill of danger survived. His body and mind doing what they know best, fine-tuned by crisis. Judging by how electric Sherlock had been, wildfire deductions as his body was visibly thrumming with the thrill of it, he’d been in need of a fix as well.

“God, I missed it,” Sherlock says, voicing John’s thoughts as they’re both catching their breaths. They’re back in the flat, leaning on the wall at the bottom of the stairs, the semi-obscurity in the hallway not enough to hide the giddiness on their faces. “A good old serial killer. Barely a 3, mind you, but I’ve been parched.”

“The game was definitely on,” John laughs, “though you do know we could’ve taken a cab back home.” 

“Public transportation is boring,” Sherlock replies with a shrug.

“Unless the cabbie wants to kill you.”

“Mm, well. It’s not Christmas every day, John.”

“Holmes, many things have changed, but your appalling self-preservation instinct is not one of them,” John replies in mock outrage.

“I prefer to rely on my doctor for such matters,” Sherlock comments, and he sounds almost coy… until he speaks again. “While I take care of the rest. You know, the blood-pumping adrenaline, the thrill of the chase, the actual detective work.”

“Do you dare imply that I’m boring?” John protests, trying (and failing) to hide his smile.

“I don’t know, do I?” Sherlock replies with feigned indifference, but the challenge in his voice is more than clear.

They take a long look at each other before they burst into laughter.

God, it’s amazing to feel this alive again. John’s body is still buzzing with excitement and relief, joined by an insidious, honeyed light-headedness. For a moment, he can see Sherlock’s face in high definition, colours vibrant in the dim hallway. Whirling specks of dust look strangely pristine in the light coming through the front door. John lets his eyelids fall and rests his head on the wall behind him, letting out a slow exhale between his parted lips.

Meeting Sherlock’s heated gaze instantly sobers him up.

He feels the slightest smile pull at the corners of his mouth before Sherlock closes the distance between them in one graceful step, pressing their lips together. Sherlock’s lips are dry, a symptom of mild dehydration. He never was very good at taking care of himself during cases.

John wants to take care of him now. Exhaustively. 

Before he knows it, Sherlock’s tongue has slipped in between his lips and they’re plundering each other’s mouths with abandon, hands equally pressing and stroking the skin hidden beneath traitorous clothes. A flash of brilliance makes John climb the first step of the staircase, crowding Sherlock’s body into the wall behind him as their gazes level and he’s no longer forced to raise himself on his tiptoes.

“Are you sure about this,” John asks, and he’s surprised to find that it doesn’t come out as a question. “The last time we went so fast…”

“Now, John,” Sherlock commands, grabbing a fistful of John’s shirt and pulling him close to clash their mouths together with an intensity bordering on roughness. John can hardly argue with that (not that he’d want to), so he slides one hand in Sherlock’s curls, tugging lightly as he presses their bodies together. They moan in each other’s mouths when their erections meet through the thick fabric of their trousers, the pleasure so incandescent that John thinks he might burst from it. 

After weeks of late-night chaste embraces, the change of pace is electrifying. Although John has been surrounded by Sherlock’s scent night by night, he feels as if this is the first time he’s awakened to it. When he leans in to taste it, pressing his tongue where Sherlock’s pulse point is hammering away, the detective rests his head against the wall, slightly tilted to offer him a better angle.

This simple gesture of surrender does unspeakable things to John. He doesn’t dare to admit it to himself, not often, how much his protective instinct goes both ways with Sherlock. He wants to keep him safe as much as he wants to be the one who makes him come utterly undone.

_Sherlock curling on the floor as John hits him again and again-_

No. John breathes through the wave of nausea threatening to take him over. _No._ He knows what he wants, now, no longer vulnerable to the confusion between desire and aggression. This is desire, through and through.

“Upstairs. Now,” he growls, realizing (a little belatedly) that Mrs. Hudson could have seen all of that, and realizing (also somewhat belatedly) that he didn’t care at all. 

Taking Sherlock to bed might be the most dangerous thing he’s ever done, so it’s no wonder that his body reacts as if he’s going to war: rapid breathing, mercurial heartbeat, the very air hitting his skin turned into a full sensory experience as Sherlock leads the way towards their apartment. As soon as John closes the door behind him, Sherlock is on him again, kissing hard enough to bruise. 

They take each other’s jackets off in a frenzy, but unbuttoning their shirts is more complicated work. It forces them to breathe, to open their eyes, and in no time the frantic rhythm they’ve been building up shifts into something more fluid and intimate.

Sherlock works on John’s upper buttons with deft fingers and undeterred concentration. His breathing pattern changes slightly with every new patch of skin revealed the fact of his trembling fingers only adds to the intimacy. John sighs when Sherlock brushes them over his chest, dipping down to kiss the skin there. 

He takes Sherlock’s hands in his own, kisses his knuckles one by one, then brushes his lips on the inside of his palm. God, this feels amazing as well. They could’ve kept claiming each other fast and hard, squeezing years of longing in the (apparently) insignificant space of a few minutes, but this.

This is Sherlock’s heart, pouring out through his shaky fingers, his shallow breaths, his reluctance to look John in the eye, now that they’re finally seeing each other again.

It’s John’s heart as well, with nowhere left to hide as he unbuttons Sherlock’s cuffs and kisses his wrists, one by one.

“I… haven’t done this before,” Sherlock murmurs with a shaky sigh, closing his eyes and resting his forehead against John’s.

“Janine?” John asks, unbuttoning Sherlock’s shirt with methodic slowness, his fingers steady and reassuring. Unbuttoning, caressing, unbuttoning again. 

“No, don’t be ridiculous. It was for a case.”

“So I’m your first, then?”

“Yes, you are,” Sherlock whispers, sliding his hands on John’s waist, beneath the open shirt. The look in his eyes makes it sound like a confession and a plea at the same time. 

“Good,” John replies, allowing a tinge of sharpness to punctuate the warmth in his voice.

What he means is: _I’m happy I get to be your first, because I’ll take care of you the way you deserve to be taken care of._

What he also means is: _Right now, I could guiltlessly kill anyone else who ever laid a hand on you, because you. Are. Mine._

Sherlock must read it all on his face, in his tone, because his expression changes from uncertainty to realization to hunger and in the next second he’s smashing his lips against John’s once again, sliding the shirt off his shoulders and touching and _touching_ as if his very life depended on it.

“I’ve never been with a man before,” John pants against Sherlock’s mouth, steering both of them in the general direction of the fireplace. It seems relevant to acknowledge it and to say it, at this point, both to himself and to Sherlock. Saying it out loud brings back the visceral awareness- fear, clenched muscles, a frisson of panic running through his chest- of why he’s been ignoring this part of himself for so long, but with a deeper breath doubt fades away, replaced by nigh unbearable warmth and desire as he straddles Sherlock in his chair.

The fact that Sherlock is a man is relevant and, at the same time, completely inconsequential. John has never wanted to fuck someone’s mind as badly as he’s wanted it with Sherlock since the beginning of them, his gender an afterthought.

Sherlock’s eyes are blown wide and his lips swollen from kissing, his open shirt exposing the pale skin beneath. He looks more debauched than John has ever seen him and downright _eatable_. More than that, the warm gleam in his eyes and the way he smiles with unbridled affection reveal that he knows the exact trajectory of John’s fleeting identity crisis- and he gets it.

John loves him for it, plain as day.

“So I’m your first, then,” Sherlock purrs, leaning in to lick a stripe on John’s neck, in imitation of what he’d received in the hallway- fuck, that feels absolutely perfect - and arriving just on time to speak the words in his low, velvety, fucking _bedroom voice_ in John’s ear.

“Jesus,” John gasps, baring his neck instinctively. “Yes, you’re my first, thank God for that pleasure.”

“Good,” Sherlock replies, eyeing John mischievously before they both burst into laughter, foreheads touching as they ease each other out of their shirts, _finally_. This effortless complicity seems to lift a weight from both of their chests, reminding John that this is the two of them, his steady island of dangerous comfort in the madness of everyday life and absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

Even though it is, in fact, one of the maddest things he’s ever done- choosing his heart over the world. In this moment, it feels strange that he could ignore this incandescent, life-giving danger for so long; him, an addict, a soldier. How did he think he could live without?

He leans in to leave a trail of open-mouthed kisses on Sherlock’s neck, on his shoulder, on his collarbone, taut skin pliant under his tongue as he gets closer to Sherlock’s heartbeat. He wants to taste it. Elevated pulse, insane rhythm, Sherlock’s hands raking through his hair as John circles his nipple with his tongue and then opens his mouth around it, biting softly.

Sherlock moans, smacking his head against the armchair with a little more force than it would be strictly decent and John wants him to do it again, so he shifts to his other nipple, repeating the motion. A swift sweep of the tongue, an open-mouthed kiss, teeth scraping gently- he does it again and again, hand brushing over Sherlock’s erection only by accident until his nipples are wet and just a little bit swollen, until he has to hold Sherlock’s hips in place to stop him from pushing up. 

He wants to take him apart bit by bit (maybe even beg for mercy; once would be nice), but Sherlock won’t stand for it; he pulls John up to taste his mouth, heady and desperate, arching his back to get the friction he’s being denied. 

“You’re teasing me,” he murmurs, sliding his hands down to grip John’s arse and holding firmly as he’s rolling his hips in slow, undulating movements. “I love it. Don’t stop.”  
John laughs affectionately and gives a last roll of the hips before he takes Sherlock’s hands and places them at his sides, lifting himself out of the chair and kneeling at Sherlock’s feet. He doesn’t break eye contact as he opens Sherlock’s belt, unzips his trousers, gestures for him to lift his hips so he can slide them down. 

The sight of Sherlock’s hard length visible through his pants, with the mark of his arousal obvious in the wet spot forming there, turns him on as much as he’d imagined it would, despite years of trying to pretend otherwise. What arouses him even more, though, is the way Sherlock is keeping his hands where John left them as he opens his legs fractionally wider- an invitation, a challenge. His dark, lust-addled gaze never leaves John’s. 

John slides his hands from Sherlock’s knees to his hips, massaging gently, kneading the sensitive flesh of his thighs. He leans in, drags his teeth with torturous slowness inches away from Sherlock’s leaking cock, reveling in the low moan it earns him. It’s torture for him as well, feeling the musky scent of Sherlock’s arousal and the hard evidence of his pleasure only a touch away, but he keeps rolling with it, tasting and biting and caressing every inch of bare flesh that he can find until time seems to have slowed down into a thick, sickly sweet flow and Sherlock is squirming beneath him, his eyes closed and his breath coming out in short, aborted huffs.

“Anything you want in particular?” John asks. He’s trying to sound composed, but it comes out hoarse and a little shaky. His own erection is straining painfully against his trousers, building an exquisite column of pleasure from the base of his spine to the tips of his toes, something that he wants to keep and amplify and fucking _consume_ already, all at the same time.

“You,” Sherlock exhales. “I want to feel you.” His cheeks and his neck are impossibly flushed and when he opens his eyes to meet John’s with pointed, clear-cut desire, something inside of John _snaps._

“Take them off,” he growls, gesturing towards Sherlock’s groin as he works his own belt and undresses with military swiftness, sighing when the cold air of the room finally touches his aching cock. In the next second, he’s straddling Sherlock again and bringing their cocks together. They both groan at the delicious skin-on-skin contact and they start a slow, gradual rhythm that feels good, except it doesn’t, so John curses under his breath and pulls back to retrieve- following the detective’s instructions- the lube from Sherlock’s bedroom drawer. And oh god, doesn’t the knowledge that he has it in the first place turn his blood hot.

“You’re bloody gorgeous, d’you know that?” he says as he straddles Sherlock once again, not unaffected by the charms of one consulting detective, gloriously naked in his armchair, vulnerable and intent. Somewhere between rolling his eyes and flushing a deeper red, Sherlock squeezes a dollop of lube on his hand and finally there’s the heat and slide of their bodies merged, a pleasure so bright that it envelops John entirely, stealing him from the outside world. And of course, _of course_ Sherlock knows exactly what to do with his hands, one wrapped around their cocks and the other one at the nape of John’s neck, holding, affirming. They’re building up towards a vicious rhythm that has them rutting against each other and alternating between uncoordinated, dirty kisses and simply gasping for air, the heat between them too little and too much and _too little_ at the same time. John tangles his fingers through Sherlock’s curls, pulling roughly as he bites his lower lip.

“John,” Sherlock gasps with an aborted twitch of his hips. “Stop.”

John startles and pulls away instantly, putting distance between their heaving bodies. His skin immediately registers the lack of Sherlock as _not good_ , but that only comes second to the panic swelling in his chest.

“No, no, not like that,” Sherlock rasps, still finding his breath. “I’m fine. Sorry. I just…”

He falters, looking down in a way that’s entirely too demure for his current predicament.

“Yes?” 

“You won’t like this.”

John blinks. Sherlock doesn’t seem to be in any serious distress. Shame, then? “I suppose you’re going to tell me anyway, so better sooner than later, yeah?” John replies, a little softer, and Sherlock leans in so their foreheads are touching, breaths echoing each other.

“Sometimes, when I had a good source, I used to draw it out”, he says quietly. “I pulled the curtains until there was only the faintest light coming in, so it would fall on my arm, right where the needle goes.” He touches his wrist, traces the purple outline of his veins, where the scars are still visible. John stiffens, unable to restrain a frown. Sherlock is right- he doesn’t like where this is going. The fact that he’s figured out why Sherlock’s drug habit bothers him so much doesn’t make him suddenly approve of it. “Cocaine, mostly. I took my time, made it into a ritual. I loved the anticipation and the way I could feel every drop slipping into my bloodstream, setting it alight.”

“This is like cocaine to you,” John clarifies. He notices the uneasiness in his stomach and breathes through it, remembering: _This is how he coped. This is what kept him alive._

_This is what he did to save you, the reckless, wonderful bastard._

“The purest, most concentrated solution, and a thousand times better. I want to make it last forever,” Sherlock whispers. His breath is ghosting on John’s ear and his long fingers are tracing John’s areolas, dipping lower to run through the smooth hairs on his belly. John’s breath catches in his throat at the attention, the air between them thick with a languidness that hadn’t been there moments before.

“I think _forever_ might be over a little too soon at our age,” he huffs. 

“Mm, don’t underestimate yourself, John,” Sherlock smiles. John has the unexpected impulse to swat his arse. For now, he just files it away for later analysis.

“I still don’t like the idea of you using,” he continues on a lower tone.

“I know.”

“But that’s my problem, not yours.” Sherlock’s fingertips are ghosting on his neck, his lips, the scar on his shoulder. Teasing, caressing. This is like a drug for Sherlock? John can work with that. He can definitely, whole-heartedly work with that. “I like _this_ idea.”

“I like _you_ ,” Sherlock says, and the reply throws John off-kilter, making him giggle as the weight in his stomach eases up. It seems that laughing in bed with Sherlock feels a little like giggling at a crime scene: silly, natural and entirely endearing. 

The moment shifts again as John runs his hands on Sherlock’s chest and dips lower to trace the underside of his cock with his thumb. It brings back memories of how he was about to suck Sherlock off only a few minutes before, flooding his mind with images he’s tried hard to suppress- his nose buried in the hair of Sherlock’s groin, Sherlock’s cock down his throat; the taste, the noises he would make, the way his body would arch right off the chair, making John choke and gasp and come. 

The intensity of his own thoughts surprises him. He’s never allowed himself to go that far, to imagine the details of being with Sherlock. There’d been fantasies before, of course, but he’d kept them purposefully blurry, as if he could pretend it was still a woman beneath that unruly mop of hair, kissing him with those tantalizing cupid’s bow lips. The very real, very sharp electricity of him being aroused by another man- by _Sherlock_ , his best friend, his partner, his _everything_ \- makes him dizzy with surprise and want.

“I’ve never felt so ravenous in my life, do you know that?” he murmurs, taking advantage of Sherlock’s exposed neck and leaning in to suck a small bite there. He gasps against the skin when Sherlock runs his thumbs against the scar on his left shoulder, caressing, pressing slightly. “And here you are, making me wait.”

“Nonsense, John,” Sherlock replies. He’s aiming for dismissive, but he ends up sounding breathless instead. “You’re ravenous about 70% of the time, if we account for your insatiable appetite even in the middle of the most complex cases. Clearly, your appetite extends beyond the stimulus of my body.” His breath hitches just a little on the last word, in time with a particularly insistent press of John’s thumb. 

“Oh,” John chuckles, his voice low and just a little bit dark. “ _The stimulus of your body?_ Is that a challenge, then?”

“Mmmaybe.”

“You want me to say it out loud? What seeing you like this does to me, what I want to do to you?”

He takes his hand off Sherlock’s cock, plants both palms possessively on the armchair at the sides of his head.

“Tell me,” Sherlock says, low baritone echoing on John’s lips. “I want to hear it.” He’s using his come-hither voice, as if he could sound sexier than he usually does without even trying- and, to no one’s surprise, it’s working.

“Sometimes,” John says, “I imagine going slow, just like today. Taking you apart with my mouth, working every inch of your gorgeous body.” He lowers his voice, leaning upwards to whisper in Sherlock’s ear- “ _Except where you really want it._ And I’d have you tied up, so you couldn’t even think about cheating your way out. How much time until you’d start begging? Twenty minutes? Fifteen?”

He massages Sherlock’s right nipple between his pointer and thumb, earning a low whimper.

“John…”

“Then I’d take you in my mouth, work you slow and deep, let you catalogue every flick of my tongue, every slide of my lips in that bloody brilliant mind of yours. Except you wouldn’t, because you’d be so past the point of thinking that you could only writhe under me as I watch you unravel.”

Sherlock’s eyes are closed and John takes his time to look, to really look at the marble sinew of his neck, at the softness of his cheeks, at his full, thoroughly kissed lips. The way he’s coming undone beneath him, word by word, fills John with a heady mix of possessiveness and reverence. He brushes his lips against Sherlock’s in a tender kiss that feels at odds and, at the same time, completely congruent to what’s passing between them right now. 

“Other times, I don’t imagine being so nice.” His voice gains a sharp edge as he slips his hand between the armchair and Sherlock’s back, aiming to pull him closer.

He freezes when he feels hard, calloused skin forming rough lines where softness should be. 

Sherlock’s years away, now palpable in the scars that John had only glimpsed around the flat before, on an accidentally bare shoulder beneath a towel or a carelessly draped sheet- he’d never mapped out the extent of them, never knew exactly how much Sherlock had been hurt. 

He’d been hurt. A lot, it seems. 

John vaguely registers that his hands are trembling. An incandescent mix of anger, protectiveness and desire takes over him, climbing from the base of his spine to the shaky tips of his fingers and turning his brain into a precise, perfectly tuned mechanism with one single purpose: _keep Sherlock safe_. Sherlock opens his mouth to speak, obviously having noticed the shift, but John steals his words by tangling his hands through Sherlock’s curls and pressing their open mouths together into a deep, unrelenting kiss. 

“Other times,” he says, surprised at how rough his voice sounds, “I imagine pinning your hands above your head as I bottom out inside you. Feel your whole body pulled taut as a string as I start moving, fucking the tension away. Showing you everything. _Everything,_ Sherlock. How I’ve always been yours, since the day I laid my eyes on you.” 

The few points of contact between them are neon-bright radiance. John’s hands in Sherlock’s hair, his breath on Sherlock’s neck, the naked skin of their thighs against each other, their cocks almost touching- for John, it’s not nearly enough, but underneath him, Sherlock’s breath hitches and his body tenses up. He hits his head on the back of the armchair with a thump as his hands wander, desperate, on John’s neck, shoulders, settling in a vice-like grip on his back. 

“John,” he says simply, and in this moment, it sounds like the most puzzling statement he’s ever made.

“How you’re mine and how I’m in charge of your pleasure and only your pleasure for as long as I’m still breathing,” John growls, sinking his teeth hard into the skin of Sherlock’s exposed neck.

Sherlock comes.

It’s quiet and earth-shattering and absolutely gorgeous. His hands are shaking where he’s still digging his nails painfully in John’s back, his entire body a taut string pinned safely between the armchair and John’s body. Sounds: a strained sigh, a whimper and John’s own breathing coming out in rapid huffs, his voice repeating Sherlock’s name in a trance with the little air he has left while he holds him through it, shuffling closer to stroke his own length hard and rough. The contrast between the earlier deprivation and the pressure of his unrelenting hand makes him dizzy, hurrying his orgasm. Other sensations: wet warmth as Sherlock is spilling himself on both of their stomachs, tension building with alarming speed at the base of John’s spine, making it enough to pull twice, three more times before it hits him violently, playing his body with rapid, halting shivers. He comes with a groan all over Sherlock’s stomach. 

The world goes still: vicious earthquake against a volcano erupting in slow motion, now half-silent with the aftershocks before their bodies sag against each other, melded together by skin and sweat and come. Breaths ghosting on neck or shoulder or lips. John’s mind has gone pleasantly hazy. _The very devil’s been shaken out of my bones,_ he thinks, then giggles a little at the ridiculousness of the thought.

“Mm. What’s funny? Let me in,” Sherlock drawls. His warm hands caress the scratched skin at John’s back. Unreasonably pleasant, but the stickiness between them is starting to grow uncomfortable.

“I was thinking that you took the devil out of me,” John says, his brain unable to come up with a witty alternative and deciding that honesty is the best route. He bursts into full-blown giggles in the following moment and Sherlock joins him after a brief second of confusion. They’re laughing like teenagers again. It’s probably the oxytocin and the vasopressin kicking in. _Pair bonding,_ John thinks light-headedly. 

“Sometimes you’re adorable when you’re trying to think,” Sherlock says with a dopey smile, cupping John’s face with long (clean) fingers. John’s hands are sticky with their shared release, so he decides that the best revenge is to wipe them on Sherlock’s neck, which turns out to be a terrible notion of payback. He ends up with his fingers in Sherlock’s mouth- wet tongue and velvet lips licking them clean- and a spiking desire for a refractory period that would allow him to put something else in Sherlock’s mouth as well, right the fuck now.

Instead, he pulls up to clean the mess on their stomachs with a couple of wet tissues retrieved from the kitchen and he gives thanks to whatever deity is out there for the small mercy of a small sofa that allows them- albeit uncomfortably- to fall asleep, with tangled limbs and lingering kisses, in each other’s arms.

-  
Later on, when they’re back at John’s place and Rosie is fast asleep, John takes his time, sliding the tips of his fingers down the scarred skin of Sherlock’s back and tracing the lines there one by one. Sherlock shudders beneath his hands, perhaps from the intimacy of the touch, perhaps from the cold breeze coming in from the open window, a snapshot of their favourite kind of London: cold, murky and full with the promise of what lies in the shadows.

“What happened?” John asks, keeping his voice low. Sherlock is spread beneath him like an offering, pale against the dark blue satin of the sheets. Cold (the wind), cold (the sheets), warm (Sherlock’s skin). Burning (the scars). John hears the possessive streak in his own voice, feels the fire (anger, arousal) burning low in his abdomen, centers himself to uncover the worry and the affection beneath them.

Sherlock takes a deep breath. “I was captured by gunmen in Serbia, while I was dismantling Moriarty’s network.” He pauses. “It’s just transport, John. It doesn’t matter to me. Though I did anticipate your reaction, and it’s… flattering.”

“Flattering,” John breathes out, hoping that his tone will convey the depths of his contempt for whoever dared to do this to Sherlock. “I would have killed them before they laid a finger on you.” This is the man he loves and these are the years that separate them, mapped out, painfully visible, even in the dim light of the evening. John wants to erase them, render them null, send them back into the nothingness they came from. He drags his wet lips across Sherlock’s shoulder- slow, thorough, reverent-, stopping at each scarred line of skin to feel the texture and the warmth under his tongue. In his peripheral vision, Sherlock is curling his fingers in the sheets, his upper body rising and falling rhythmically to the pattern of his quickening breaths.

He settles his hands on Sherlock’s hips to feel every twitch, every tremble of his lover’s body as he alternates soothing touches with rougher ones, tongue pressing insistently with the barest hint of teeth. Sherlock moans and ruts against silky satin at the ghost of pain, a reaction that goes straight to John’s groin, building up the exquisite pleasure-pressure there.

“I wish I could’ve had a say in it,” John murmurs. His lips slide lower, where the scars start to fade on Sherlock’s lower back, and his hands rest on Sherlock’s buttocks, kneading the soft flesh there. Sherlock arches into the touch, giving a rough hum of approval. “I wish I could’ve been by your side.”

“I know,” Sherlock whispers. He turns around without notice and grabs John by the back of his neck, clashing their lips together with urgency as he wraps his legs around John’s waist. Truth plays back and forth between their willing, famished bodies.

“Your turn,” Sherlock rasps between kisses. “Tell me.”

“When you died is when I realized I’d loved you all along,” John says simply, finding his breath. He’s using one hand to prop himself up so he can look into Sherlock’s eyes- light blue, hazy and entirely transparent with affection. The words flow with ease, lighter than he’d ever expected. “I asked you not to be dead, and swore that I’d tell you if I ever got the chance.”

“I heard you,” Sherlock says, a little sadly, and John’s heart swells with affection, regret and something indescribably different, hot and cold and hot all over as the world spirals in and is simmered down to the wet points of contact between them.

“I only have one regret,” John whispers against Sherlock’s curls.

“Mm, just one?” Sherlock asks, and his tone is light even if the words hang heavy. 

“Shut up,” John laughs. “One that matters right now. I’m sorry I didn’t get to actually touch you the first time I made you come.”

“Mmm,” Sherlock hums. “Don’t mind. Touching is…”

“… boring, yeah,” John laughs. “But not really,” he adds, cupping Sherlock’s cheek in his hand, his thumb massaging gently. Sherlock leans into the touch, like a cat being petted, and lowers his eyelids with a contented sigh. 

“Far less than I’d anticipated,” he drawls. With his eyes still closed, he traces the line of John’s arms, takes John’s hand and draws small circles on his wrists, touches his fingers one by one, as if he’s mapping them. 

“Are you… storing me in your Mind Palace?” John hadn’t realized how much he was craving simple touch as well, for all his ideas about Sherlock being the cold, aloof one. Affection, a steady point of contact between him and the outside world, a reminder that maybe, just maybe, he-this- is enough.

“Oh, please. You’ve been _stored_ years ago. I’m only adding the missing details. Still need to collect data,” Sherlock muses, turning John’s palm face-up and tracing every line with the tip of his pointer. 

“Stop it, it tickles,” John laughs. He takes Sherlock’s hand in his own and mirrors the touch. Sherlock closes his eyes and lets out a small “Ah” at the gentle contact, which turns into something more when John reaches his wrist and his lower arm. 

“God, your voice,” John says appreciatively. “I always wondered how you’d sound in bed. Tried not to.”

“And failed,” Sherlock rasps. “I never even tried. Not to imagine it, that is.”

It takes John a moment to catch on. “You wanted to hear me?” he asks, taken aback. If Sherlock’s deep baritone was enough to transport him- and probably the rest of the planet- into a lust-addled trance, John’s own voice was nothing beyond ordinary.

“Yes. I love how your voice changes when your inhibitory control breaks. When you’re in awe. When you’re passionate. When you fight to control it, which you often do.”  
“Not always,” John replies with a frown, pulling his hand back from Sherlock’s skin as soon as he feels the familiar bitterness rising in his throat. 

Sherlock takes his hand gently and places it back on his chest.

“Human, remember?” he says, and John is dangerously close to being convinced, even as the tenderness in Sherlock’s gaze threatens to overwhelm him. Sherlock hasn’t abandoned his research, his hands now exploring John’s neck at a leisurely pace, barely-there touches on his Adam’s apple, beneath his ears, at the nape of his neck. John’s breath catches in his throat when Sherlock kisses his brow, his cheek, his nose, his chin, little pecks that feel a little like being kissed by a fawn. Which has to be, at least partially, true. 

“I trusted you since the day you killed a man for me with no second thoughts,” Sherlock breathes against his scar, his neck, his lips, as if he knows that this, exactly, is what John needs to hear. “I know who you are, and I want all of it.”

 _Drama queen_ , John’s mind supplies. Who even says something like that in bed? Inconveniently, the words go straight to his groin, setting his blood alight with a fresh wave of lust.

“All of it?” John asks, burying a hand in Sherlock’s curls and pulling none too gently. He wants, God, how he _wants_. He rolls his hips up so their cocks meet, slowly, methodically.

“Yes,” Sherlock pants. “I heard you. You wanted to say how you want to be the only one in charge of my pleasure. You said something else.”

“I want to be in charge of your pleasure and only your pleasure,” John remembers.

“You’re afraid of hurting me.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t. I trust you.” His gaze bears down into John’s with crystal clarity. “I trust you. Trust me.”

John blinks at him, grasping the enormity of his words. _Trust,_ a feeble thing that had been lacking in his life before Sherlock and had reached ridiculous levels after moving to 221B- as far as hoping for a dead man to come back to life.

And he did.

“Always,” John breathes, and that’s when words stop being enough.

-  
_John,_

_You’re wrong. Things always change. This is the meaning of entropy. You started your day unassuming, thinking you’d leave the letter in my flat, then I’d find it and offer you some kind of forgiveness. Instead, we were kidnapped by my murderous sister, we almost died and your letter reached me days later, half-burned where you’d dropped it on the floor before jumping out the window._

_Given enough time, everything falls into disorder: walls collapse, stone erodes, people grow old. (Entropy isn’t actually about chaos, but I’m making a compromise to maintain the poetic tone of this letter. It’s what you like.) The two of us are a closed system, we have been from day one, and it was inevitable for us to grow apart, to nurse disorder, to have to do the work of resisting chaos with a good measure of order._

_Which we didn’t- and yet, here we are._

_I, as well, wouldn’t have it any other way._

_Always yours,  
Sherlock_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be an epilogue later on. Until then, thanks for reading, y'all! Comments make me happy :)


	4. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief farewell <3

The hair on the nape of John’s neck rises when they enter the building, the clinical, unyielding appearance of the place mixing with his less-than-pleasant memories and settling as a cold weight at the bottom of his stomach. When Sherlock takes his hand without much fanfare, John resists a minute impulse of pulling away. 

They haven’t talked about their relationship with Mycroft and with Sherlock’s parents, the three people who are now walking behind them on the long hallways of Sherrinford, and the thought of that particular conversation still unnerves John. But- his brain usefully supplies- if walking hand in hand to see the person who fucked up Sherlock’s life is what Sherlock needs, John is ready to provide. 

He squeezes firmly, giving Sherlock what he hopes to be a reassuring look. He can’t read his partner’s face, but Sherlock’s hand clasps his own in a steady grip.

When they enter the cell- neon lights and empty walls, white over white- Eurus’ eyes immediately settle on John and on the place where his hand meets Sherlock’s. A cold chill runs down John’s spine at that look. Detached, clinical, a (mad) scientist’s perspective. He wouldn’t mind as much if it wasn’t directed towards _them_ , this new, fragile, wonderful reality between him and the man who had saved him. John swallows and straightens his back, squaring his shoulders in a soldier’s defense. Mycroft and his parents are moving towards the line of chairs arranged against the wall, but Sherlock doesn’t take his eyes off Eurus, and soon, the taut, invisible line connecting their gazes seems to be sucking the air out of the entire room.

John waits, barely realizing he’s been holding his breath. He’s not sure why this matters so much to him. He knows who she is, what she is, what she’s done. Despite his willingness to come to Sherrinford, he’ll never be able to “get over” what happened, to accept her as a part of Sherlock’s family. _His_ family. 

At the same time, he knows how Sherlock feels about her, how his heart (cracked and broken and stitched back together with drugs and self-abandonment and hours over hours of work) somehow found a way to expand impossibly further, finding a place for her. It’s one more thing about Sherlock, he realizes, that he’s come to admire. And because of this fact, because Eurus matters to Sherlock, he supposes- in a strange, off-kilter way- she matters to him too. 

It’s the one remaining piece of the puzzle, after they’ve started rebuilding their lives in 221B, filling the air with laughter and tension and adrenaline when it’s time to do what they know best, steadying themselves in the joint construction of their shared life where nothing and everything is new at the same time. It makes John giddy, it sobers him up- his Sherlock, his Rosie, his family, so beyond what he’d thought he deserved that he sometimes wonders how come he’s not still at the bottom of that fountain, struggling for air. It’s the last piece of the puzzle: the woman who’s pushed Sherlock to the breaking point and almost destroyed him, a constant presence between them even as she’s locked up, miles away.

Sherlock keeps looking at her, throwing the ball in her court, asking her- as if it mattered, and God, for her it really does- _is this alright with you? I’ve moved in together with this man, we’re sharing the same bedroom, we have a daughter and we solve cases side by side. You’ve almost ruined me, and then you saved me by making me save you. I love him- and look, I still see you._

Eurus gives a small, sad smile, breaking the tension between them as she turns around to pick up her violin. When Sherlock reaches to open his case, she stops, shaking her head slightly. 

Sherlock straightens back up and looks at her expectantly.

Without taking her eyes off her brother, she hits the first notes of his song- the one he’d composed years ago, the one that had made John green with jealousy, thinking it was for Irene, when in fact- Sherlock had confessed- it had been for him all along.

Eurus was playing their song, years of loneliness and longing stitched together into something both right and beautiful.

And this, John thinks as he slips his fingers through Sherlock’s one more time, is exactly who they are.


End file.
